Northern gumption could make the BJP go South
In the late 1940s, Sardar Patel, India’s first Deputy Prime Minister in Jawaharlal Nehru’s Cabinet, embarked on the strenuous task of uniting India. The country was then a patchwork quilt of British India and the monarchs who ran their own show.
While the 17 British Indian provinces accepted without a murmur, the 560 Princely States that made up around two-fifths of India’s land mass refused to accede. One of the fiercest opponents of United India was Sir CP Ramaswami Iyer, the aristocratic Dewan of Travancore, a separate kingdom in Kerala.
Sir CP as he was called, was also Patel’s friend, but only had contempt for Nehru and Gandhi: Gandhi was a “sex maniac who could not keep his hands off young girls”, and Jawaharlal Nehru was “unstable”. The Dewan’s vision included himself as a stable uniter of sovereign nations, who would persuade other southern rulers to form a loose federation of independent countries, with perhaps himself as the Prime Minister—a South India with its own military, economic, domestic and foreign policy.
On June 18, Travancore’s king Chithira Thirunal Balarama Varma announced, “On and from 15th August, 1947, Travancore will reassume its independence and sovereignty in full measure.” Nehru hated Sir CP. He threatened to bomb Travancore if it didn’t accede to India. He even told Patel that he would get the Dewan shot if he entered Delhi. Patel, deadpan, replied, “He’s presently staying in my house, and is not to be disturbed.”
Sir CP’s fall was his anti-Communism. October 1946 saw Kerala’s own Chauri Chaura—Communists burned down Punnapra Police Station killing many people, including cops. The Travancore Army retaliated by machine-gunning a mob of armed Communists that had gathered to fight the government. On July 25, 1947, a Socialist activist attacked the Dewan at a concert. Sir CP was gravely wounded and rushed to hospital. The Raja, warned of a civil war, did not have the stomach for a fight. Travancore acceded.
Narendra Modi’s implacable mission to capture the South and go down in posterity as India’s Total Unifier is facing a psychological brick wall; the unforgiving barrier of history. North India, where the BJP reigns supreme, is amalgamated by ultra-conservative Hinduism, Hindi, and a massive populace that lives off welfare. South Indian’s identity comes from the Dakshin ethos, the antipode of the Uttar.
The BJP’s vote percentage is rising in parts of the South (especially in Tamil Nadu, thanks to the redoubtable Annamalai’s exertions) mainly due to popular disgust with regional dynastic corruption. Yet BJP’s rhetoric hasn’t translated into a significant number of Lok Sabha seats. Polarisation, enforcement agencies and brute state force isn’t likely to help it win the South. Word of unsolicited advice: let the South be, because it is fiercely proud of its own culture, tradition, languages and the arts, and rejects any linguistic colonisation.
Pluralistic by nature, Bollywood films and music, even Punjabi music, tandoori chicken and the salwar kameez are ubiquitous across the South. Today’s BJP is not a gentle giant of the Atal-Advani era, but an aggressive monolith that ruthlessly imposes its will by hook or by crook. For millennia, the South has internalised arrivals and invasions by absorbing their impact into its pluralistic culture: Arabic, Greek, Roman, Islamic, Mughal and Maratha. Unity is not monogynous; its a homogenous entity with different living parts like a human body. Unless Modi plugs into the biology of the Southern gestalt, the only direction his party’s fortunes could go is south.